SEATBELT securely fastened. Seat in its upright position. That distinctive humming sensation in the head that always happened when the cabin slowly depressurised along with their steady descent. And that other very familiar growling sound which said the huge Boeing was throttling back on its final approach into London’s Heathrow Airport at last. And suddenly panic erupted from nowhere, drying Madeline’s mouth, closing her eyes, catching at her breath and jerking her hands into white-knuckled fists on her trembling lap.

Was she really ready for this?

What a question! she chided herself angrily. What a useless, stupid question to ask herself now, of all times!

Of course she was ready. And even if she wasn’t, she would still have come!

Nothing—nothing would stop her from attending Nina’s wedding. Not even the reawakening of a sick panic she had thought she’d spent the last four years combating!

Four years, she thought painfully. Surely four years had been quite long enough to spend in exile for her sins, without her having to feel like this? Four years ago she had been just too young and ill-equipped to deal with the pain and humiliation of it all. She had been her own worst enemy then. But she was four years older now, she reminded herself sternly, four years the wiser, and she had gained four full years’ much needed maturity and sophistication to help armour herself against whatever waited for her down there beneath those familiar grey clouds of London.

‘All right, darling?’

Part of her armour, Madeline admitted as she forced a reassuring smile for her travelling companion. Perry had invited himself along on this trip, and she had hesitated only slightly before accepting his company—whether through conceit or cowardice she wasn’t sure. Conceit certainly played a part in her need to show them all at home just how well she could do for herself. And cowardice because she was uncomfortably aware that she was using Perry as an elegant prop for her new image.

An image that was the complete antithesis of her old one.

Perry, she supposed, could be called her latest beau! He was one of the Boston Linburghs. The eldest son and heir in fact to that highly influential and wealthy family. And looked it too, she noted fondly as she studied his smooth lean profile. Hair the colour of wood ash, worn fashionably short, styled to the good shape of his head. His eyes were a warm shade of hazelnut, and his smile the unaffected kind which made him so easy to like.

She and Perry had been a ‘thing’ for several months now. Their relationship—warmly platonic, she decided, described it best—was useful to both of them, because behind their friendly intimacy they were each nursing the wounds of a broken engagement.

So, when Nina’s letter had arrived begging Madeline to come to her wedding, Perry had immediately suggested he come with her.

‘I can combine the trip with some business my father needs attending to at our London office. That way, at least I’ll be able to to be with you at weekends.’ And give you any support you may find you’ll need, was his silent addition. She and Perry understood each other very well.

‘What’s this stepsister of yours like?’ he enquired now, turning teasing eyes on her. ‘Not one of the wicked kind, is she?’

‘Nina?’ Madeline gasped. ‘Good grief, no!’

If anything, she thought ruefully, she was the wicked stepsister; Nina was the angel.

Madeline was the only child from Edward Gilburn’s first marriage, a marriage that had lasted only six stormy years before ending up in a surprisingly amicable divorce considering her parents’ track record for doing nothing amicable for each other. The then five-year-old Madeline had remained in England with her father when her mother decided to return to the States to live. Dee, her Boston-born-and-bred mother, had possessed just enough sensitivity to see that parting Madeline from her father would have been nothing short of first-degree murder, since they both doted so much on each other. Dee had not been offended, just philosophical about the situation. Madeline and her father had needed each other more than they needed Dee. So she had packed her lorry loads of baggage and shipped herself back to Boston, where Madeline had commuted on a regular visiting basis ever since.

She had been just eight years old when her father announced his intention to remarry, and she could still remember how determined she had been to hate this unexpected competitor for her father’s affections. Then in walked Louise, a vision of fair and gentle loveliness. And by her side, with her small hand clinging to her mother’s, stood Nina, tiny will-o’-the-wisp Nina, with her mother’s anxious cornflower blue eyes and soft vulnerable mouth. And the very spoiled and wilful Madeline Gilburn had been captivated right there and then.

On looking that far back as the plane’s wheels touched smoothly down to earth, Madeline wondered why everyone had been so surprised by her immediate capitulation when over the years she and her father had proved time and time again how much in harmony were their thoughts and feelings. Where one loved, the other invariably loved also.

Which had made it doubly painful for both of them when she and Dominic broke up...

Dominic. Thoughts of Dominic Stanton brought her full circle and back to the very roots of her moment’s panic. It was because of him that she had run away to Boston four years ago. And, she acknowledged secretly, it was also because of him that she had decided to come back.

She needed to lay the ghosts of a love long dead.

Customs clearance took ages, but eventually she emerged into the mad crush of the arrivals lounge with her loaded luggage trolley, her blue eyes scanning the sea of faces she encountered, looking for the one she was expecting to see and completely oblivious to the interested glances she was receiving for herself alone.

She was tall and beautifully slender in her tailored suit of pure silk knit, its electric blue colour an exact match to her wide-spaced eyes. Her skin was a little pale after the long hours cooped up in an aeroplane, but nothing could dim its natural purity. Her long blue-black hair had been confined in a braided coronet for the journey, and had arrived at the end of it looking as sleek and sophisticated as it had when she’d set off more than twelve hours ago. She was the kind of woman who stood out in a crowd. Destined to belong to someone special. Exclusive.

The man walking at her side suited her. His air of high breeding and easy sophistication showed clearly. His smooth fairness complemented her dark sleekness. Two very sophisticated people.

‘Madeline!’

Her head twisted, blue eyes alighting on the tall distinguished figure of her father, and on a soft cry she moved eagerly into his arms.

‘You’re late,’ he complained after releasing her from a suffocating bear-hug of an embrace. ‘Over an hour late coming in, and another hour getting through those infernal Customs!’

Madeline smiled and kissed his cheek. ‘Don’t knock the tight security,’ she scolded him. ‘It’s all done for our own safety.’

‘Hmph,’ was his only answer to that as he held her out at arm’s length so he could look at her. ‘You’re looking good enough to eat,’ he decided, ‘though how you manage to after that lousy journey confounds me.’

‘Mummy comes in useful for some things, you know,’ she grinned. Expecting and getting another disparaging ‘Hmph’.

There was very little love lost between her parents. Her father saw Dee as a very beautiful but empty-headed social doll, and Dee saw her father as a brusque, insensitive tyrant. The only place they met in any harmony was where their daughter was concerned, and even there they begged to differ—over all points but her happiness.

‘Now, where’s this young man your mother’s been telling me so much about?’

Turning in her father’s arms, Madeline searched Perry out, to find he had been joined by a big dark-haired man who was greeting him like an old friend.

‘Forman!’ she cried in surprise.

The newcomer grinned and came over to kiss her cheek. She had met Forman Goulding several times in Boston. He was a big dark man with the kind of hard masculine looks she tended to shy away from these days. He was also Perry’s cousin and the member of the family who took care of their European interests.

It was with Forman that Perry was going to stay during his stay in London, coming to Madeline in Lambourn during the weekends only. By the time all the introductions had been made, her father had invited Forman down to Lambourn with Perry whenever he wished to join them, then they were all moving outside to her father’s Bentley, with Rogers his chauffeur standing by the boot waiting to receive her luggage, and in front of it a long low growling monster of a car which could only belong to Forman Goulding.

Perry took Madeline in his arms and kissed her gently, promising to be with her in Lambourn by Saturday lunchtime.

‘That was a fine show of affection,’ her father commented once they were seated in the car and on their way.

‘Was it?’ Madeline murmured, then subtly turned the conversation by demanding to know how everyone was, her eyes warm on him as she listened to all the latest news.

At fifty-five he was still a strikingly attractive man with his head of thick wavy hair which had gone prematurely white in his twenties. He was a man who carried the power he wielded around with him like a banner. Dominic had once described him as a man who totally lacked caution but possessed the luck of the devil to compensate. Reluctant though Madeline was to agree with anything Dominic Stanton said, she had to agree with that particular observation. Her father took risks in business guaranteed to rock the City back on its heels in horror. The fact that he invariably made the right move placed him high on the respect rating with people in the speculative business. Few scoffed at a Gilburn idea. Nobody dared underestimate him. He was just too sharp, too shrewd.

‘And what’s this Charles Waverley like?’ she asked when her father concluded the local news without mentioning Nina’s new fiancé. ‘I can’t imagine our own little Nina getting married and leaving the fold,’ she added drily. ‘She was always such a timid little home bird.’

‘Charles is perfect for Nina,’ her father assured her. ‘He possesses a natural desire to love and cherish, which is all we can ever ask of the man who wins our Nina. Their marriage will be a good one,’ he asserted confidently.

A weight pressing down on her heart kept Madeline silent while she diminished it. It was nothing new to her to feel this terrible burden constricting her chest whenever she thought of love and marriage. It was something she’d had to learn to live with—and control so no one else knew it was there. Love held only bitter memories for her, painful experiences she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. Marriage meant commitment. An honest declaration of love undying. She had once known love, thought the offer of marriage gave her that commitment. But she had been wrong. And she never wanted Nina to know that same pain, that same anguished desolation.

‘And Louise—how is she?’ she asked next.

‘Very well,’ her father said positively. ‘Beautiful and well,’ he added with all the satisfaction of a man who adored his lovely wife to distraction. Louise suited the blustery Edward Gilburn far better than Madeline’s own mother had. With Louise he had a chance to utilise that softer side of his nature which otherwise would never be seen. No one would think of being cruel or tyrannical towards Louise. She was just too soft and vulnerable. ‘And eager to have you back home,’ he finished warmly.

Madeline didn’t doubt it. Louise had been a wonderful surrogate mother to her throughout her formative years. And she had done it without coming between daughter and father or outlawing Dee.

‘She had your rooms completely refurbished as a surprise for you—then sat down and worried herself silly that she should have left them as you remembered them, and had us all frantic in case she decided to change them back again in the hopes that you wouldn’t notice! Nina managed to stop her.’ He sounded heartily relieved. ‘She told her that the new Madeline I’ve been telling them all about would hate to sleep in a candy-pink room with frills and flounces!’

Would she? Madeline laughed dutifully, but felt a heavy sense of loss inside, as if the old Madeline had died, and this new one was just a stand-in. Would other people see her as a stranger now, someone they had to learn to know all over again? She shuddered at the thought. She had just grown up, that was all. Albeit late.

Watching her covertly, Edward Gilburn read more in his daughter’s studiously placid features than she would like. He had worried terribly about her when she first went to Boston four years ago. Dee had been marvellous with her, he had to admit. She’d refused to let their daughter mope, dragging her—literally sometimes—protesting miserably out to face the human race and learn to deal with it again. But he had feared what kind of person was going to emerge from the ashes of this brutal kind of therapy. He had been relieved to find Madeline slowly learning to cope during his regular visits to see her in Boston. But he could not say he was exactly happy with the final result of the four-year influence of her rather superficial mother.

Where had all that sparkling eagerness to meet life full on gone? he wondered in grim exasperation. That wild and wonderful love of life which made her the captivating creature she was at eighteen? Trust Dee to bleed it all out of her, he thought grimly.

And, not for the first time, he cursed Dominic Stanton for making it necessary for his baby to place herself in the hands of her mother.

‘Nina was worried you might not come,’ he put in quietly.

‘Because of Dominic, you mean?’ As usual, Madeline went directly for the point, and Edward smiled to himself. Dee obviously hadn’t managed to curb that natural habit. Then the smile went awry when he remembered how that painfully open honesty of hers had made her broken love affair with Dominic all the harder for her to bear. She had not been able to seek solace in lying to herself, and the truth had been so dreadfully hard to endure. ‘I didn’t know I’d given such a feeble impression of myself.’

‘You didn’t, darling, and you know it.’ Her father’s hand came out to take hers, squeezing it gently.

‘What Dominic did to me was cruel.’ Madeline said flatly. ‘But what I did to him was unforgivable. Neither of us came out of it well. It took me a whole year to acknowledge that,’ she admitted on a small smile. ‘And a bit of brutal talking from Mummy,’ she added drily. ‘She was brutal all around, when I come to think of it.’ She shrugged, slender shoulders moving up and down beneath the immaculate silk jacket. ‘Was that your doing?’ She looked enquiringly at her father. ‘Did you advise her not to let me wallow?’

His face gave him away, and Madeline smiled again. If anyone knew how best to deal with her, then it was this man. ‘Thank you,’ she leaned over to kiss his cheek. ‘Your instincts rarely let you down, do they?’

‘They did where Dominic was concerned,’ he muttered gruffly. He had liked and respected Dominic Stanton. So much so that he’d encouraged his love affair with Madeline from its conception. Everyone concerned had, the Stantons just as eagerly as the Gilburns. It had been a beautiful dream while it lasted. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for my part in encouraging you.’ He voiced his grim thoughts out loud.

‘You really had no say in what I did, you know,’ Madeline drily pointed out. And he grinned because he knew as well as she did that when Madeline wanted something badly enough she went all out to get it. And she had wanted Dominic, so badly that it still hurt just to remember. ‘We were simply wrong for each other,’ she stated flatly. ‘And we should perhaps be thankful that we found out soon enough. Does Charles Waverley run a successful racing stable?’ Once again, she deftly changed the subject.

‘Very. He trained last year’s Derby winner...’

There were going to be some surprised faces around Lambourn in the near future, Edward Gilburn ruefully judged as he watched the sleek mask of sophistication drop smoothly into place on his daughter’s face. And found himself yearning for a time when a black-haired, wicked-eyed gypsy had danced all over his peace of mind. A time when Nina had captivated, and Madeline shocked. While Nina had sat sewing her fine seam, filling his heart with a gentle gladness for being allowed to take the place of her dead father, Madeline would be off on some wild prank or other which would inevitably bring his wrath tumbling down on her unrepentant head—followed by his secret respect. She rode like the devil, played every sport there was going with panache. And later, when she grew into a wild and wilful young woman, she’d run rings around all the poor besotted young men who fell for a pair of wicked blue eyes and a mane of wild black hair.

Dee had despaired of ever taming her then, he recalled. She would send letters home with Madeline after one of her Boston visits, enquiring in her oh, so sarcastic way if Edward was raising their daughter as a delinquent for any specific reason. But even Dee had had to admit that Madeline drew the opposite sex to her like bees to honey, that she was exciting to be with. Madeline possessed a fierce will of her own, but she was also able to laugh at herself, and not many could do that.

Dominic hadn’t laughed, the damned fool! If he had—if only he had laughed that fateful night of the country club ball, then maybe Madeline wouldn’t have run away, and maybe she would not be sitting next to him now, talking with the bland aplomb of the well trained socialite.

He preferred the other girl, the one who would have been bouncing up and down beside him right now, brimming with excitement, plans, driving him demented with the pranks she intended pulling on her friends.

Or maybe she wouldn’t, he then revised thoughtfully. Maybe time alone would have taken the spirited child out of Madeline. Perhaps Dominic Stanton had only accelerated a natural progression—though he didn’t think so. He knew his daughter well, knew what kind of devil drove her, because the self-same one had driven him. It had taken him over forty years to learn to tame his own. He hadn’t expected Madeline to do it any quicker.

No, Dominic had done that, taught her how to think before she acted; hide instead of being her true exciting self!

* * *

They stood like a formal reception party, Madeline noted drily as the car slowed and stopped in front of the grey-stoned country manor house where Louise, Nina and a serious-faced man stood waiting for them at the bottom of the wide stone steps.

Louise looked no different than she had the last time Madeline had seen her four years ago now. Small, and neat-figured, she still had hair that shone that wonderful spun-gold colour, and her smile was still that infinitely gentle one Madeline had first encountered at the age of eight. Nina had altered, though, she noted with a small shock. Her stepsister had grown more beautiful in the four intervening years, her pale gold hair a short cap of enchanting curls around her angelic face. And that had to be Charles Waverley, she decided as she turned her attention to the only stranger in their midst. Tall, weatherbeaten, with the whipcord-lean frame of a working farmer, he stood head and shoulders above both women. There was an expression of solemn reserve about his chocolate-brown eyes.

And it was at him that she smiled first. Why, she wasn’t quite sure, except that she knew somehow that it was what Nina would want her to do, make this man she had fallen in love with know she welcomed him into their small family fold.

She saw the uncertain glance he sent Nina before he levelled his gaze back on her, and also saw the hint of relief, as if he’d just taken some terribly important test and was now glad it was over.

‘Maddie, darling!’ It was Louise who came forward to envelop her in her warm embrace. ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you home!’ She pushed her to arm’s length in much the same way her father had done earlier at the airport, her smile rather watery. ‘And looking so different, too!’ she exclaimed. ‘So frightfully sophisticated!’

‘Nice to be back, Louise,’ she answered earnestly, somehow unable to return the effusive greeting. It’ll come back, she told herself firmly, frowning inwardly at her own reticence. It was only now as she stood here with these people she had spent so many years of her life with that she noticed the restraint she had learnt to apply on herself. ‘And you haven’t changed in the slightest,’ she made an effort to sound natural. ‘I hope Nina won’t mind if I tell you I had to take a second look to tell which of you was which!’

‘You’ve earned yourself a kiss for that,’ Nina said promptly, coming to replace her mother in Madeline’s arms. ‘I can’t think of a better compliment than to know I look like Mummy. Hello, Maddie,’ she added huskily, looking up at her with gentle, loving eyes. ‘Have you missed us?’

‘Every single day,’ she assured, unwilling to tell the truth and admit that she had found it necessary to her own survival to dismiss all that was even vaguely English from her mind for those first few years. ‘And you look wonderful. Would that have anything to do with this rather dishy man I see standing guard behind you?’ she teased.

Nina blushed, and turned to draw Charles Waverley closer. ‘This is Charles, Madeline,’ she gravely introduced. ‘And you have to like each other on sight, or I shall be miserable.’

Madeline found herself looking once again into those serious brown eyes, and held out her hand. ‘Well,’ she said frankly, ‘I shall promise to like you on sight, Charles, so long as you can promise me you’ll take precious care of Nina.’

‘A promise I won’t find it difficult to keep.’ He smiled, and took her outstretched hand.

‘Let’s get inside, shall we?’ Edward Gilburn’s gruff voice broke in. ‘Come on, Charles,’ he took his future son-in-law’s arm. ‘Women are notoriously silly when it comes to hellos and goodbyes. Let’s you and I go and find a nice glass of something while they talk each other’s tails off.’

With a laugh, the three women followed them indoors, and proceeded to do exactly what Edward Gilburn had predicted by chatting madly—or, more correctly, Nina and Louise did the chattering. Madeline simply smiled a lot and put the odd word in now and then when required. They didn’t seem to notice her reserve, though she did.

It will come, she repeated to herself on a small frown. It was only natural that she should feel strange with them after a four-year separation. The old natural camaraderie would return soon enough once she’d settled back in...

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Passionate Scandal

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Passionate Scandal
Michelle Reid

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

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